H.E. Mr. Shimon Peres
President of the State of Israel
at the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit
New York, 20 August, 2010
History was written in blood. Most wars were waged over territory.
Today, science, creativity and knowledge replaced land as the source of wealth. Land can be conquered. Not science. Science is global, borderless. Armies can't conquer it.
Yet, still, Lawless terrorists spread violence caused by ideological differences, social gaps and sheer fanaticism. The new millennium must liberate the world, from bloodshed, from discrimination, from hunger, from ignorance, from maladies.
Modern science is capable to provide new answers. In the coming ten years there will be an explosion of knowledge. Computation power increased a million folds in the last 25 years. Scientists are venturing into the brain.
Mr. President,
I speak on behalf of a small people, and a tiny land. We knew rebirth despite the murder of one third of our people. The Shoah. We were alone. Our land was attacked 7 times in 62 years. Again. We were alone.
Never giving up on hope, we developed science. We found that the future is in our hands. We learned that people can enrich land, no less than land can nourish the people.
Israel is the product of pioneering human spirit – not of financial capital.
In spite of wars, we made peace with Egypt and Jordan. The territorial dispute with Lebanon has ended and acknowledged so by the UN.
We left Gaza on our own initiative. Completely. We are now negotiating with the Palestinians in order to realize the two-state-solution:
A Jewish state, Israel. An Arab State- Palestine. There is no other peaceful alternative. And, I believe that we shall succeed. We are ready to enter in direct negotiations with Syria immediately.
Mr. President
We are committed to the Millennium development goals. We share the burden of saving the world from war and hunger. Without peace, poverty will remain. Without food – peace will not prevail.
Statesmen have to mobilize political power to achieve peace. Scientists can enable the land produce more food. We developed an agriculture based on science.
Our farmers produce 8-folds per acre compared with the nation's early days. The need for water was cut in half. We employed desalination, recycling, drip and electronic irrigation and bio-engineering to create new seeds and richer crops.
Five decades ago, an Israeli farmer produced food for 15 persons. Today, he produces for 120.
The farmer's contribution to the GDP equals that of a high-tech engineer. To cultivate land, you have to cultivate education and improve health.
So we introduced free compulsory education for all, from age 5 to 18. It brought an end to illiteracy and provided us with the highest rate of scientists per square mile in the world. The National health-care system provides world-class treatment for every citizen.
We are also one of the only countries in the world that entered the 21st century with more trees than it had when it entered the 20th century.
Mr. President,
I am confident that our path is available to everyone. Our experience is replicable. We are ready to share our experience as we did already with many countries –– both through UN agencies and bilaterally.
Our call includes also nations that don't have diplomatic ties with us.
Mr. President,
The other day, the formal leader of Iran declared there's no future for Israel in the Middle East. I believe that the Middle East has room for every person, every nation, every religion.
We believe that every person was created in the image of the lord – and there's just one Lord who calls not to hate, not to threaten, not to seek superiority, and not to kill. There is enough room for friendship in the Middle East.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In my youth I was a member of a Kibbutz, cultivating poor land. I owned, like all members, two shirts and two pairs of pants. There was a third pair of pants: made of flannel reserved for grooms only.
I was lucky to wear them for two full days during my wedding. The main dish in the kibbutz was eggplants. Meat was available once a week, but not every week. There was no private money and little collective money.
We were poor and happy. The sort of happiness felt when a person as is turning desert into garden. Today the kibbutz has a thriving agriculture and a profitable guest house. Food is plentiful. It is in the kibbutz, in scarcity, where I learned to respect pioneers. And developed an affinity to creative minds and laborious hands. Actually, my early dream was to see the world as a great kibbutz. Free, peaceful, productive.
Mr. President,
I call upon this gathering to address the two burning challenges: first, to harness science and technology to increase food production. And second, to stand together against terror. A hungry world will never be peaceful.
A terrorized world will never be governable. We should unite around a common hope. The cradle of our children shall be the cradle of our vision.
מח' מידע ואינטרנט – אגף תקשורת
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
FEMINISM HAS FAILED: the live debate of the "Intelligence Square" project.
INTELLIGENCE 2 . The Australian Forum for Live Debate is a project of the St. James Ethics Centre, Sydney and The Wheeler Centre, Melbourne.
“Feminism has failed” was the topic of the debate at Melbourne Town Hall on Wednesday evening, 22nd September, 2010.
Speakers for the Affirmative:
Virginia Hausagger, award winning journalist; Gay Alcorn, formerly Age Washington correspondent, now Sunday Age Editor; Stephen Mayne founder of ww.crikey.com, who now pursues shareholder activism promoting more women on Boards.
Speakers for the Negative:
Jennifer Byrne, TV personality; Monica Dux, writer for the Age and co-author of The Great Feminist Denial; Wendy McCarthy, founding co-convenor of WEL, corporate advisory practice, mentoring for Government and large corporations on diversity and women’s leadership.
Rules of the debate.
Each spoke for exactly 9 minutes, in turn ‘for’ and ‘against’. At the end, the audience was invited to put questions or comments from the floor for exactly 1 minute each for and against in turn. After 15-20 minutes, the principal speakers were again invited to give us their 2 minute closing remarks.
The audience was individually asked to vote ‘for’ or ‘against’ the proposition at the beginning, but also given coloured voting papers to put into ballot boxes collected after the debate. The CEO of the St. James Ethics Centre was the MC, who then announced the results of the voting.
Both before and after the debate, the results were similar: more than half voted for the negative, a quarter were undecided and the rest for the affirmative.
THE SPEAKERS’ COMMENTS.
1st.For.
V.H. drew attention to the miserable plight of women in those countries where they practice ‘honour killings’, ‘stonings’, child marriages, trafficking of women and children and general subjugation, without the feminist movement making any impact on them.
1st. Against. J.B. focused on her own situation, i.e. women closer to home. We have choices which our mothers never had. Education and opportunities for women which came about because of the feminist revolution.
2nd. For.
S.M. pointed out the dismal failure of having women in leadership positions on any major corporations,- with one or 2 exceptions; the small percentage of women lawyers who have senior partnerships in major law firms; the fewer women MPs; the lack of support by women to help them get onto the large Corporate Boards. David Jones has not lost sales in spite of the sexual harassment case against them. AFL has only one woman on any Club Board and if there is one she is usually given the Human Resources portfolio! No major newspaper editor is female; the “faceless men” in politics,- where are the women?
2nd. Against.
M.D. Feminism is not unsuccessful in delivering on its promises, because it is still a ”work in progress”. Gender inequality is complex. It took 8 Centuries for the male conjugal rights over women to be revoked by legislation! Feminism is diverse, complex and often divisive. There were never demands with deadlines, but a continuous battle; there are new words which we now take for granted like sexism, sexual harassment, ‘glass ceiling’, etc. Feminism has not failed: it has only just begun! “Half the sky movement” was mentioned.
3rd. For.
G.A. At daily newspaper conferences re where stories are placed in the papers, items are usually divided up as “feminine” and others! She has ambition for wider general and stronger feminism, rather than the personal satisfaction for a few. There is little difference to the male power structure in our community. Has the real culture changed at all? Hardly, because sexism is so embedded that we hardly notice it,- but if we do, nothing is done about it. Feminism has little impact on e.g. body image. Young men brought up with pornography instead of female sexuality issues. Power distribution has not changed because of feminism in Australia,- most bosses are males, most stressed at work are females. Media covers only 9% of women’s sport; JK Rawlins is actually Joanne, but publishers too nervous to show she is a female author for parents of boys to buy her books about boys! The real world in which we live, feminism has hardly made a dent in it.
3rd Against.
W. McC. As a still working grandmother, she has seen great strides made in her lifetime. But one had to and still have to work at it, not wait like little princesses for equality to happen by itself! The greatest success has been the universal education of women. In the ‘60s, married women couldn’t stay in the education department or in the Public Service! There was no access to contraception,- later the Pill had a luxury tax put on it, but it was the feminist movement that fought to have it removed. There was no access to abortion, even Equal Pay did not have support from the Union Movement,- only the feminists fought for it.
Feminism is the sum total of many parts to effect change for the better. Change doesn’t just happen, you have to make it happen by working at it. Feminism has also created better space for men to ‘grow’ in their relationships at home with their families. The business and public sector is just a bit slower to change. Leadership by women comes in a little later, but a look at the obituaries of important persons in the newspapers, shows that more women are being listed there!
That’s already a good sign!
Q. FROM THE FLOOR.
(Yvonne Allen who runs a relationship business for single people) stated that feminism has failed the successful business and professional women who too often have achieved success at the expense of missing out on successful relationships.
W. McC. Said it is not about the destination, but about the journey. (Gertrude Stein: where is ‘there’? Somewhere!)
Criticism of newspapers focusing on the women at the Brownlow medal night, instead of on the elite athletes that the guys are. As though we are going backwards in feminist ideals!
Topic itself was criticized as being a bit insulting and probably masculine-suggested.
Young women very involved right across the board in various fields.Very encouraging.
Worried about the argument,- must stop congratulating ourselves and patting ourselves on the back as though we have achieved everything.
Most countries will be reporting that they will not be meeting the Millennium Goals for Status of Women by 2015, currently at the UN in NY for UNMDG meeting.
We live in a difficult age and must give men more room, but as women we must not give up our goals.
CONCLUDING REMARKS BY MAIN SPEAKERS.
Most on the affirmative side said that while agreeing that much has been achieved, much more needs to be done.
Those on the negative side, said that it is a ‘work in progress’ and we must not deny the achievements, while striving to keep going ahead.
My conclusion:
I could not decide which side had won, so I tore my voting slip in half to indicate that.
Of course feminism has achieved a lot for the Western woman, but not much for those in the developing world or in the Theocracies of the Islamic nations. Women in all the religious institutions have not yet managed to gain equal status across the board.
But the evening was very enjoyable due to the excellent presentations by the speakers. The fact that it attracted an audience of probably close to 2000, women of all ages plus a sprinkling of men, was incredible. But on the way out, I overheard 2 young women talking: “I like Julia’s white jacket,- it is very well made.”
I would hope that they are students of fashion, or feminism just went out over their heads!
MM
Frontpagemag.com
Polling Feminist scholars, finding women's studies bias: The Trouble With Israel
> THE TROUBLE WITH ISRAEL
>
> September 20, 2010 Posted by Scott at 7:00 AM
>
> Barbara Hollingsworth reports on an illuminating experiment conducted by University of Illinois Professor Fred Gottheil:
>
> Prof. Fred Gottheil told Frontpagemag.com that he compiled a list of 675 email addresses from 900 signatures on a 2009 petition authored by Dr. David Lloyd, professor of English at the University of Southern California, urging the U.S. to abandon its ally, Israel. Prof. Gottheil discovered that six of the signers, who hailed from more than 150 college campuses, were members of his own faculty.
>
> "Would these same 900 sign onto a statement expressing concern about human rights violations in the Muslim Middle East, such as honor killing, wife beating, female genital mutilation, and violence against gays and lesbians?" he wondered. "I felt it was worth a try."
>
> The results? "Almost non existent," he told Frontpage editor Jamie Glazov. Only 27 of the 675 "self-described social-justice seeking academics" agreed to sign Gottheil's Statement of Concern - less than 5 percent of the total who had publicly called for the censure of Israel for human rights violations.
>
> Like all good experiments, Professor Gottheil's leads to a conclusion:
>
> The refusal of women's studies professors to publicly condemn honor killings, or academic advocates of gay rights to speak out against the treatment of homosexuals in Muslim countries, is just about as hypocritical as it gets. Their loathing (dare we call it hate?) of the UN-created Jewish state is so deep that it "trump[s] their professional interests," leading them into a "ideologically discriminatory trap of their own making," Prof. Gottheil added.
>
> Or stated otherwise: "The academic Left may be just a little more sophisticated [than the non-academic Left] in their loathing of Israel, but scratch the surface and it's all the same...It turns out that with all their professing of principle, they are sanctimonious bigots at heart."
“Feminism has failed” was the topic of the debate at Melbourne Town Hall on Wednesday evening, 22nd September, 2010.
Speakers for the Affirmative:
Virginia Hausagger, award winning journalist; Gay Alcorn, formerly Age Washington correspondent, now Sunday Age Editor; Stephen Mayne founder of ww.crikey.com, who now pursues shareholder activism promoting more women on Boards.
Speakers for the Negative:
Jennifer Byrne, TV personality; Monica Dux, writer for the Age and co-author of The Great Feminist Denial; Wendy McCarthy, founding co-convenor of WEL, corporate advisory practice, mentoring for Government and large corporations on diversity and women’s leadership.
Rules of the debate.
Each spoke for exactly 9 minutes, in turn ‘for’ and ‘against’. At the end, the audience was invited to put questions or comments from the floor for exactly 1 minute each for and against in turn. After 15-20 minutes, the principal speakers were again invited to give us their 2 minute closing remarks.
The audience was individually asked to vote ‘for’ or ‘against’ the proposition at the beginning, but also given coloured voting papers to put into ballot boxes collected after the debate. The CEO of the St. James Ethics Centre was the MC, who then announced the results of the voting.
Both before and after the debate, the results were similar: more than half voted for the negative, a quarter were undecided and the rest for the affirmative.
THE SPEAKERS’ COMMENTS.
1st.For.
V.H. drew attention to the miserable plight of women in those countries where they practice ‘honour killings’, ‘stonings’, child marriages, trafficking of women and children and general subjugation, without the feminist movement making any impact on them.
1st. Against. J.B. focused on her own situation, i.e. women closer to home. We have choices which our mothers never had. Education and opportunities for women which came about because of the feminist revolution.
2nd. For.
S.M. pointed out the dismal failure of having women in leadership positions on any major corporations,- with one or 2 exceptions; the small percentage of women lawyers who have senior partnerships in major law firms; the fewer women MPs; the lack of support by women to help them get onto the large Corporate Boards. David Jones has not lost sales in spite of the sexual harassment case against them. AFL has only one woman on any Club Board and if there is one she is usually given the Human Resources portfolio! No major newspaper editor is female; the “faceless men” in politics,- where are the women?
2nd. Against.
M.D. Feminism is not unsuccessful in delivering on its promises, because it is still a ”work in progress”. Gender inequality is complex. It took 8 Centuries for the male conjugal rights over women to be revoked by legislation! Feminism is diverse, complex and often divisive. There were never demands with deadlines, but a continuous battle; there are new words which we now take for granted like sexism, sexual harassment, ‘glass ceiling’, etc. Feminism has not failed: it has only just begun! “Half the sky movement” was mentioned.
3rd. For.
G.A. At daily newspaper conferences re where stories are placed in the papers, items are usually divided up as “feminine” and others! She has ambition for wider general and stronger feminism, rather than the personal satisfaction for a few. There is little difference to the male power structure in our community. Has the real culture changed at all? Hardly, because sexism is so embedded that we hardly notice it,- but if we do, nothing is done about it. Feminism has little impact on e.g. body image. Young men brought up with pornography instead of female sexuality issues. Power distribution has not changed because of feminism in Australia,- most bosses are males, most stressed at work are females. Media covers only 9% of women’s sport; JK Rawlins is actually Joanne, but publishers too nervous to show she is a female author for parents of boys to buy her books about boys! The real world in which we live, feminism has hardly made a dent in it.
3rd Against.
W. McC. As a still working grandmother, she has seen great strides made in her lifetime. But one had to and still have to work at it, not wait like little princesses for equality to happen by itself! The greatest success has been the universal education of women. In the ‘60s, married women couldn’t stay in the education department or in the Public Service! There was no access to contraception,- later the Pill had a luxury tax put on it, but it was the feminist movement that fought to have it removed. There was no access to abortion, even Equal Pay did not have support from the Union Movement,- only the feminists fought for it.
Feminism is the sum total of many parts to effect change for the better. Change doesn’t just happen, you have to make it happen by working at it. Feminism has also created better space for men to ‘grow’ in their relationships at home with their families. The business and public sector is just a bit slower to change. Leadership by women comes in a little later, but a look at the obituaries of important persons in the newspapers, shows that more women are being listed there!
That’s already a good sign!
Q. FROM THE FLOOR.
(Yvonne Allen who runs a relationship business for single people) stated that feminism has failed the successful business and professional women who too often have achieved success at the expense of missing out on successful relationships.
W. McC. Said it is not about the destination, but about the journey. (Gertrude Stein: where is ‘there’? Somewhere!)
Criticism of newspapers focusing on the women at the Brownlow medal night, instead of on the elite athletes that the guys are. As though we are going backwards in feminist ideals!
Topic itself was criticized as being a bit insulting and probably masculine-suggested.
Young women very involved right across the board in various fields.Very encouraging.
Worried about the argument,- must stop congratulating ourselves and patting ourselves on the back as though we have achieved everything.
Most countries will be reporting that they will not be meeting the Millennium Goals for Status of Women by 2015, currently at the UN in NY for UNMDG meeting.
We live in a difficult age and must give men more room, but as women we must not give up our goals.
CONCLUDING REMARKS BY MAIN SPEAKERS.
Most on the affirmative side said that while agreeing that much has been achieved, much more needs to be done.
Those on the negative side, said that it is a ‘work in progress’ and we must not deny the achievements, while striving to keep going ahead.
My conclusion:
I could not decide which side had won, so I tore my voting slip in half to indicate that.
Of course feminism has achieved a lot for the Western woman, but not much for those in the developing world or in the Theocracies of the Islamic nations. Women in all the religious institutions have not yet managed to gain equal status across the board.
But the evening was very enjoyable due to the excellent presentations by the speakers. The fact that it attracted an audience of probably close to 2000, women of all ages plus a sprinkling of men, was incredible. But on the way out, I overheard 2 young women talking: “I like Julia’s white jacket,- it is very well made.”
I would hope that they are students of fashion, or feminism just went out over their heads!
MM
Frontpagemag.com
Polling Feminist scholars, finding women's studies bias: The Trouble With Israel
> THE TROUBLE WITH ISRAEL
>
> September 20, 2010 Posted by Scott at 7:00 AM
>
> Barbara Hollingsworth reports on an illuminating experiment conducted by University of Illinois Professor Fred Gottheil:
>
> Prof. Fred Gottheil told Frontpagemag.com that he compiled a list of 675 email addresses from 900 signatures on a 2009 petition authored by Dr. David Lloyd, professor of English at the University of Southern California, urging the U.S. to abandon its ally, Israel. Prof. Gottheil discovered that six of the signers, who hailed from more than 150 college campuses, were members of his own faculty.
>
> "Would these same 900 sign onto a statement expressing concern about human rights violations in the Muslim Middle East, such as honor killing, wife beating, female genital mutilation, and violence against gays and lesbians?" he wondered. "I felt it was worth a try."
>
> The results? "Almost non existent," he told Frontpage editor Jamie Glazov. Only 27 of the 675 "self-described social-justice seeking academics" agreed to sign Gottheil's Statement of Concern - less than 5 percent of the total who had publicly called for the censure of Israel for human rights violations.
>
> Like all good experiments, Professor Gottheil's leads to a conclusion:
>
> The refusal of women's studies professors to publicly condemn honor killings, or academic advocates of gay rights to speak out against the treatment of homosexuals in Muslim countries, is just about as hypocritical as it gets. Their loathing (dare we call it hate?) of the UN-created Jewish state is so deep that it "trump[s] their professional interests," leading them into a "ideologically discriminatory trap of their own making," Prof. Gottheil added.
>
> Or stated otherwise: "The academic Left may be just a little more sophisticated [than the non-academic Left] in their loathing of Israel, but scratch the surface and it's all the same...It turns out that with all their professing of principle, they are sanctimonious bigots at heart."
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
ISI LEIBLER RETURNS TO AUSTRALIA FOR A VISIT
JERUSALEM POST
Jews in the lucky country
by Isi Leibler
September 21, 2010
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=2434
I returned with my wife Naomi on the eve of Rosh Hashana from a brief visit to Australia, frequently referred to as Down Under, being the most geographically distant destination from Europe (and Israel).
Besides visiting family and friends, the principal purpose of our visit was to partake in a major fund-raising event in Melbourne, hosted by Australian Emunah, a constituent of the global religious Zionist women's organization which Naomi currently heads as world president. Emunah last year was the recipient of the Israel Prize in recognition of its extensive network of children's homes and welfare institutions catering for all disadvantaged Israelis.
The keynote speaker was former Australian prime minister John Howard and during the evening, we both made reference to his visit to Israel on the eve of the second intifada when he had persuaded me reluctantly to join him when he met Yasser Arafat in Gaza. After the meeting, I expressed reservations about Arafat, suggesting that a duplicitous murderer was unlikely to change his spots. Howard vowed that if Arafat failed to adhere to his commitments "the people of Israel and the Australian Jewish community should rest assured that I will not let them down."
He certainly fulfilled that promise, emerging during the 11 years of his term as one of Israel's staunchest international friends.
During my visit, Australia was undergoing a political crisis. Julia Gillard, who had displaced her Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd a few months earlier, had called for an election. Many traditional Labor voters, angered by the brutal displacement of her predecessor, voted against their party, resulting in a hung Parliament which was only resolved when four independent parliamentarians ultimately endorsed her.
PRIOR TO World War II, Australian Jewry was a decaying Anglo Jewish outpost. It was the flow of refugees and Holocaust survivors which enriched and transformed the community into what is today considered one of the most thriving and dynamic Jewish diasporas. Many who found haven in Australia succeeded and prospered. Today, strengthened by recent infusions from Russia and South Africa, there are approximately 120,000 Jews principally concentrated in three cities - Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.
Australian Jewry is frequently depicted as a role model for other Diaspora communities. Having, aside from Israel, the highest proportion of Holocaust survivors, it is dominated by painful memories but is also a forwardlooking Zionist community.
The community created an extraordinary network of day schools and cultural institutions catering to all Jewish religious and cultural streams. The majority of graduates partake in courses in Israel ranging from three months to a year and more than 12, 000 Australians have made aliya. Intermarriage while growing is much lower than in other Western Jewish communities.
Until the 1950s, Australia was a far cry from the country of today. It was racist, bigoted ,anti-Semitic and notorious for its White Australia policy. However by absorbing migrants from all corners of the world, Australia evolved into a unique multicultural society, open-minded, liberal and tolerant. Yet, today, determined not to follow the disastrous example of Europe which provided free rein to minorities opposing the central tenets of democracy and freedom, many Australians realize that multiculturalism can only succeed if the participants share a commitment to the open society. Today, despite growing anti-Semitism, the standing of the Jews is similar to the US and the influence of Muslim migrants is limited.
Australian Jews are proud that since the birth of Israel, with only one exception, consecutive Australian governments have remained strongly supportive. The links go back to Australian soldiers who served in Palestine in both world wars and developed warm relations with Jews in the Yishuv in 1940-41.
Australia has also been highly supportive of major Jewish global endeavors such as the struggle to free Soviet Jewry. As far back as 1962, it became the first country to raise the issue of Soviet anti-Semitism and the refusal to grant Jews the right to make aliya at the UN. Former refuseniks will recall that the Australian embassy in Moscow was highly forthcoming in extending whatever help and support possible and even held receptions for them. In my visits to the Soviet Union, successive Australian prime ministers, despite incurring the rage of the Soviet authorities, instructed the Moscow embassy to provide me with transportation and support in meeting refuseniks.
The government also played a major role in the struggle to rescind the UN resolution bracketing Zionism with racism and assisted Australian Jewish leaders in their efforts to help pave the way for diplomatic relations between Israel and both India and China.
MUCH OF the credit for this can be attributed to a united Jewish leadership which was never reticent in raising its voice to confront governments displaying bias against the Jewish state or conforming to the anti-Israeli stance of the international community. There was also a longstanding tradition by the Jewish community to facilitate visits to Israel for a wide cross-section of parliamentarians. Likewise, the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce emerged as possibly the most effective and successful of all the chambers of commerce.
The Australia-Israel relationship was strengthened during the 11 years of the Howard government. Over the past year, just prior to the overthrow of prime minister Rudd by his own party, there were concerns that the policy had tilted against Israel because the government was canvassing support for election to the UN Security Council. Following a meeting with the national Jewish leadership, the situation appeared to have been resolved but was never tested because shortly afterward, Gillard displaced Rudd.
It would seem that today bipartisan support for Israel will be maintained. However, there are concerns. Gillard is regarded as being evenhanded and friendly, but the Labor Party was obliged to forge an alliance with the Greens whose attitude toward Israel is highly antagonistic. However, most of her new cabinet is pro-Israel, as is the powerful opposition.
Of course, all is not rosy. The younger generation, like its global counterparts, lacks the passion of its forbears who lived during the Holocaust and witnessed the struggle to establish the State of Israel. The cost of day school education has risen considerably, with many parents unwilling to match the sacrifices of their parents to ensure a Jewish education for their children. The level of intermarriage, while low compared to the US and most European countries, is growing.
There is also a discernible change in the political climate. Australian trade unions, traditionally bastions of support for Israel, now even endorse anti-Israeli boycotts. The churches, many of which were previously hostile, have intensified their anti-Israeli approach. Anti-Israeli activity at universities is escalating and encouraged by a number of Jewish academics. Anti-Zionist Jewish splinter groups have emerged although in contrast to the US, they are totally marginalized from the mainstream.
Yet notwithstanding these emerging challenges, if there were more Jewish communities like Australia, the future of Diaspora Jewry would be far more secure than it is.
ileibler@netvision.net.il
This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post
Jews in the lucky country
by Isi Leibler
September 21, 2010
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=2434
I returned with my wife Naomi on the eve of Rosh Hashana from a brief visit to Australia, frequently referred to as Down Under, being the most geographically distant destination from Europe (and Israel).
Besides visiting family and friends, the principal purpose of our visit was to partake in a major fund-raising event in Melbourne, hosted by Australian Emunah, a constituent of the global religious Zionist women's organization which Naomi currently heads as world president. Emunah last year was the recipient of the Israel Prize in recognition of its extensive network of children's homes and welfare institutions catering for all disadvantaged Israelis.
The keynote speaker was former Australian prime minister John Howard and during the evening, we both made reference to his visit to Israel on the eve of the second intifada when he had persuaded me reluctantly to join him when he met Yasser Arafat in Gaza. After the meeting, I expressed reservations about Arafat, suggesting that a duplicitous murderer was unlikely to change his spots. Howard vowed that if Arafat failed to adhere to his commitments "the people of Israel and the Australian Jewish community should rest assured that I will not let them down."
He certainly fulfilled that promise, emerging during the 11 years of his term as one of Israel's staunchest international friends.
During my visit, Australia was undergoing a political crisis. Julia Gillard, who had displaced her Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd a few months earlier, had called for an election. Many traditional Labor voters, angered by the brutal displacement of her predecessor, voted against their party, resulting in a hung Parliament which was only resolved when four independent parliamentarians ultimately endorsed her.
PRIOR TO World War II, Australian Jewry was a decaying Anglo Jewish outpost. It was the flow of refugees and Holocaust survivors which enriched and transformed the community into what is today considered one of the most thriving and dynamic Jewish diasporas. Many who found haven in Australia succeeded and prospered. Today, strengthened by recent infusions from Russia and South Africa, there are approximately 120,000 Jews principally concentrated in three cities - Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.
Australian Jewry is frequently depicted as a role model for other Diaspora communities. Having, aside from Israel, the highest proportion of Holocaust survivors, it is dominated by painful memories but is also a forwardlooking Zionist community.
The community created an extraordinary network of day schools and cultural institutions catering to all Jewish religious and cultural streams. The majority of graduates partake in courses in Israel ranging from three months to a year and more than 12, 000 Australians have made aliya. Intermarriage while growing is much lower than in other Western Jewish communities.
Until the 1950s, Australia was a far cry from the country of today. It was racist, bigoted ,anti-Semitic and notorious for its White Australia policy. However by absorbing migrants from all corners of the world, Australia evolved into a unique multicultural society, open-minded, liberal and tolerant. Yet, today, determined not to follow the disastrous example of Europe which provided free rein to minorities opposing the central tenets of democracy and freedom, many Australians realize that multiculturalism can only succeed if the participants share a commitment to the open society. Today, despite growing anti-Semitism, the standing of the Jews is similar to the US and the influence of Muslim migrants is limited.
Australian Jews are proud that since the birth of Israel, with only one exception, consecutive Australian governments have remained strongly supportive. The links go back to Australian soldiers who served in Palestine in both world wars and developed warm relations with Jews in the Yishuv in 1940-41.
Australia has also been highly supportive of major Jewish global endeavors such as the struggle to free Soviet Jewry. As far back as 1962, it became the first country to raise the issue of Soviet anti-Semitism and the refusal to grant Jews the right to make aliya at the UN. Former refuseniks will recall that the Australian embassy in Moscow was highly forthcoming in extending whatever help and support possible and even held receptions for them. In my visits to the Soviet Union, successive Australian prime ministers, despite incurring the rage of the Soviet authorities, instructed the Moscow embassy to provide me with transportation and support in meeting refuseniks.
The government also played a major role in the struggle to rescind the UN resolution bracketing Zionism with racism and assisted Australian Jewish leaders in their efforts to help pave the way for diplomatic relations between Israel and both India and China.
MUCH OF the credit for this can be attributed to a united Jewish leadership which was never reticent in raising its voice to confront governments displaying bias against the Jewish state or conforming to the anti-Israeli stance of the international community. There was also a longstanding tradition by the Jewish community to facilitate visits to Israel for a wide cross-section of parliamentarians. Likewise, the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce emerged as possibly the most effective and successful of all the chambers of commerce.
The Australia-Israel relationship was strengthened during the 11 years of the Howard government. Over the past year, just prior to the overthrow of prime minister Rudd by his own party, there were concerns that the policy had tilted against Israel because the government was canvassing support for election to the UN Security Council. Following a meeting with the national Jewish leadership, the situation appeared to have been resolved but was never tested because shortly afterward, Gillard displaced Rudd.
It would seem that today bipartisan support for Israel will be maintained. However, there are concerns. Gillard is regarded as being evenhanded and friendly, but the Labor Party was obliged to forge an alliance with the Greens whose attitude toward Israel is highly antagonistic. However, most of her new cabinet is pro-Israel, as is the powerful opposition.
Of course, all is not rosy. The younger generation, like its global counterparts, lacks the passion of its forbears who lived during the Holocaust and witnessed the struggle to establish the State of Israel. The cost of day school education has risen considerably, with many parents unwilling to match the sacrifices of their parents to ensure a Jewish education for their children. The level of intermarriage, while low compared to the US and most European countries, is growing.
There is also a discernible change in the political climate. Australian trade unions, traditionally bastions of support for Israel, now even endorse anti-Israeli boycotts. The churches, many of which were previously hostile, have intensified their anti-Israeli approach. Anti-Israeli activity at universities is escalating and encouraged by a number of Jewish academics. Anti-Zionist Jewish splinter groups have emerged although in contrast to the US, they are totally marginalized from the mainstream.
Yet notwithstanding these emerging challenges, if there were more Jewish communities like Australia, the future of Diaspora Jewry would be far more secure than it is.
ileibler@netvision.net.il
This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post
Sunday, September 19, 2010
The 21st Century's Religious Battlegrounds.
The 20th Century saw the first World War fought on nationalism, the second on a megalomaniacal racist ideology as well as nationalism, then the Cold War on a no less megalomaniacal,now communist-anti-religious nationalism of the East, versus individual freedoms and the free market ideologies of the West.
Where to next? How can the world live in peace for long? Democracies are for the educated, freedom loving, middle classes.
Inevitably, the conflict focus shifted towards the democratic religious freedoms of the Judeo-Christian West being attacked by the poor Islamic theocracies of the ME, Africa and Asia.
In each case,it was and is economic disparity which creates jealousies between warring nations and even between splinter groups within nations. These are the root causes of all wars and conflicts. Is religion the common denominator now (?cosa belli)or the means to an end? For the fanatical Islamists,- it is their Hitlerian or Stalinist aim to rule over an Islamic world. For the Shiite rulers like Iran's Ahmadinejad,Hezbollah, Hamas et al. it is simply to show up to the majority Sunnis and the West that they are as powerful and as good as they are at .....what?
In between,- of course there is tiny Israel,- the perennial Jewish scapegoat,- far too successful at surviving for the other religions to swallow.
Between political repressions, armed conflicts and poverty in the third-world, it is the West, including Australia which is swamped by an exodus of people from those countries.
Their religious customs vary, their cultural backgrounds are different to the European ones and there is not just racism which is feared,(as the 2 articles below show) but a religious and customary intolerance when new minority communities may insist on maintaining ways of life which are totally at odds with the accepting resident majority. Unless the demographics change of course- then all will adapt to the new cultures' way of life as Australia already has since the WW2.
As I keep maintaining,- if we want new immigrants to become accepted citizens in their new countries, there are certain fundamental laws and principles which they must be told about from the beginning. Most come because they think that freedom and tolerance means that they can keep on living and doing everything the way they were used to in their (obviously failed) previous homeland.It is the economic advantages they want, first and foremost. The educated elite would know what to expect and try to integrate, but most refugees are not of that class. They need a lot of help, support, investment in education, absorption and intercultural bridge-building. It usually takes a couple of generations to work themselves in successfully.
Except that now we have the internet and when do we want everything? Now!
Is it timely for the world to prepare for a cyber war next perhaps?
The 'space invaders' may be here already!
MM
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theage.com.au/national/battlegrounds-for-belief-20100917-15gdx.html
BATTLE GROUND FOR BELIEF
Barney Zwartz
Which groups of Australians most worry other Australians? Muslims, gays and -astonishingly- witches. These apparently anachronistic views appear in a survey of public submissions to a national inquiry into freedom of religion and belief in the 21st century, from which the draft report was submitted last week to the Australian Human Rights Commission.
--(snip)---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Conclusion)
(Professor) Parkinson thinks political correctness has nearly made genuine belief about right and wrong illegitimate.
“What has been an orthodox view for thousands of years is now almost illegal to express.”
He (Professor Patrick Parkinson, Sydney Uni.) says there are legitimate concerns that moves to protect religious freedom might actually limit them. ''The Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission is exhibit one. The HREOC [Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, now the Australian Human Rights Commission] also got off to a terrible start with Tom Calma. The religious freedom issue was very significant in resistance to a human rights act, because there was a view that the commission was aggressively secular and didn't respect or understand religious rights when in competition with anything else,'' Parkinson says.
''The commission has a lot of bridge-building to do. But the president, Catherine Branson, is very well aware of our concerns and, I think, keen to mend fences.'' Parkinson is less optimistic about the Victorian commission. ''It will need to shed some of its more extreme and dogmatic positions in order to regain the trust and respect of faith-based communities in Victoria.''
Victorian Equal Opportunity Commissioner Helen Szoke says the organisation has spent years painstakingly engaging with religious groups. ''I think everyone is completely respectful of the values and beliefs of Christian organisations, but they are both protected by the human rights and equal opportunity framework and also have obligations under it,'' Szoke says.
Clearly, consensus is a long way off, and the commission will need the wisdom of Solomon if it is to satisfy both those who want religious exemptions reduced, and those suspicious souls who in their submissions called it ''the Freedom from Religion inquiry''
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/religious-intolerance-is-only-for-the-weak-20100917-15g65.html?comments=76#comments
Religious intolerance is only for the weak
Martin Flanagan
September 18, 2010
WHILE appearing to smoke joints rolled with pages from the Bible and the Koran in footage posted on YouTube, Brisbane atheist Alex Stewart had this to say: "With respect to books like the Bible and the Koran, whatever, just get over it.'' This could be a line from a Cheech and Chong movie. Stewart went on: ''Is this profanity? Is it blasphemy? Does it matter?'' Well, it matters to some people.
America right now is in strife in this regard. The issue of a Muslim community centre being built near the Ground Zero site is proving bitterly divisive. President Barack Obama stands in the middle trying to preserve calm, but a recent survey shows more Americans now believe Obama is a Muslim than when he was elected president. That's worrying. Even more worrying is that 60 per cent of those people said they got their idea from the media.
One of Obama's most vocal critics is media "personality" Glenn Beck. Last month, writing about a Beck "Restoring Honour" rally, celebrity journalist Christopher Hitchens said the upsurge in anti-Muslim feeling among white Americans reflected the fact that the day when they no longer constituted the majority of the American population was now within "thinkable distance".
Hitchens is also an atheist. In June, he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and announced that he was dying. This has led to him receiving a flood of emails from believers offering prayers on his behalf. One emailer called on him to convert to Christianity, saying he would be the biggest recruit to the cause since Saint Paul. Hitchens is the former Trotskyite who ended up championing the invasion of Iraq. Saint Paul is the former tax collector who became the early Christian church's great proselytiser.
The comparison is an intriguing one.
During last month's federal election, a young man told me he was voting for Tony Abbott because Julia Gillard had no family and Abbott did. He added, ''She's an atheist. She doesn't believe in anything.'' As a matter of logic, it doesn't follow that an atheist doesn't believe in anything. Generally, what characterises atheists is a radical disbelief in the story of divine behaviour attributed to the religious entity commonly called God.
In this respect, I am impressed by the Jewish practice of not using the word God. They write G-d and, in so doing, dismantle much of the argument before it begins. Most arguments about God are really arguments about ideas of God; about mental images of God (which might, in turn, be seen as examples of idolatry). It's a lot harder to imagine G-d than it is to imagine God.
During the election, I heard a woman who was against Gillard say that atheists didn't believe in anything outside themselves. But what if they believe, for example, in justice as a basic human right? And what if they believe that, in humankind, there is a capacity for good - along with all the other human capacities - that can be appealed to. These are beliefs in something both outside the individual and greater than the individual.
Debates about atheism tend to be boring. Like all conflicts to do with religion, they seem to end up with kindred spirits in passionate opposition to one another. A recent example was the Florida pastor who proposed burning the Koran because, in his view, it was not a book of peace - without appearing to realise he was committing an act of war. Earlier this week, the number of people said to have died in Kashmir as a result was already 19.
I understand people being attracted to atheism at this time. The great question asked by our age may indeed be: Is religion ultimately a blessing or a curse for humanity? But there is a fundamental difference between religion as an idea and a good person who's religious. I hope I show respect to good people wherever I meet them, and an age-old sign of respect is to avoid giving needless offence.
But there's also an argument here to do with global realpolitik. We have to find a way to live with one another, or what do we honestly expect is going to happen on our already overcrowded planet?
There are intellectuals who argue that conflict is inevitable, but the further such voices of reason live from the places where the conflicts are actually occurring, where thousands of civilians are being blown apart and bereaved, the less persuasive I find them. Some would say the position of tolerance I am arguing for is weak and based on an illusion. I say it is coldly pragmatic and may require all the strength we can muster.
Martin Flanagan is a senior writer.
Where to next? How can the world live in peace for long? Democracies are for the educated, freedom loving, middle classes.
Inevitably, the conflict focus shifted towards the democratic religious freedoms of the Judeo-Christian West being attacked by the poor Islamic theocracies of the ME, Africa and Asia.
In each case,it was and is economic disparity which creates jealousies between warring nations and even between splinter groups within nations. These are the root causes of all wars and conflicts. Is religion the common denominator now (?cosa belli)or the means to an end? For the fanatical Islamists,- it is their Hitlerian or Stalinist aim to rule over an Islamic world. For the Shiite rulers like Iran's Ahmadinejad,Hezbollah, Hamas et al. it is simply to show up to the majority Sunnis and the West that they are as powerful and as good as they are at .....what?
In between,- of course there is tiny Israel,- the perennial Jewish scapegoat,- far too successful at surviving for the other religions to swallow.
Between political repressions, armed conflicts and poverty in the third-world, it is the West, including Australia which is swamped by an exodus of people from those countries.
Their religious customs vary, their cultural backgrounds are different to the European ones and there is not just racism which is feared,(as the 2 articles below show) but a religious and customary intolerance when new minority communities may insist on maintaining ways of life which are totally at odds with the accepting resident majority. Unless the demographics change of course- then all will adapt to the new cultures' way of life as Australia already has since the WW2.
As I keep maintaining,- if we want new immigrants to become accepted citizens in their new countries, there are certain fundamental laws and principles which they must be told about from the beginning. Most come because they think that freedom and tolerance means that they can keep on living and doing everything the way they were used to in their (obviously failed) previous homeland.It is the economic advantages they want, first and foremost. The educated elite would know what to expect and try to integrate, but most refugees are not of that class. They need a lot of help, support, investment in education, absorption and intercultural bridge-building. It usually takes a couple of generations to work themselves in successfully.
Except that now we have the internet and when do we want everything? Now!
Is it timely for the world to prepare for a cyber war next perhaps?
The 'space invaders' may be here already!
MM
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theage.com.au/national/battlegrounds-for-belief-20100917-15gdx.html
BATTLE GROUND FOR BELIEF
Barney Zwartz
Which groups of Australians most worry other Australians? Muslims, gays and -astonishingly- witches. These apparently anachronistic views appear in a survey of public submissions to a national inquiry into freedom of religion and belief in the 21st century, from which the draft report was submitted last week to the Australian Human Rights Commission.
--(snip)---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Conclusion)
(Professor) Parkinson thinks political correctness has nearly made genuine belief about right and wrong illegitimate.
“What has been an orthodox view for thousands of years is now almost illegal to express.”
He (Professor Patrick Parkinson, Sydney Uni.) says there are legitimate concerns that moves to protect religious freedom might actually limit them. ''The Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission is exhibit one. The HREOC [Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, now the Australian Human Rights Commission] also got off to a terrible start with Tom Calma. The religious freedom issue was very significant in resistance to a human rights act, because there was a view that the commission was aggressively secular and didn't respect or understand religious rights when in competition with anything else,'' Parkinson says.
''The commission has a lot of bridge-building to do. But the president, Catherine Branson, is very well aware of our concerns and, I think, keen to mend fences.'' Parkinson is less optimistic about the Victorian commission. ''It will need to shed some of its more extreme and dogmatic positions in order to regain the trust and respect of faith-based communities in Victoria.''
Victorian Equal Opportunity Commissioner Helen Szoke says the organisation has spent years painstakingly engaging with religious groups. ''I think everyone is completely respectful of the values and beliefs of Christian organisations, but they are both protected by the human rights and equal opportunity framework and also have obligations under it,'' Szoke says.
Clearly, consensus is a long way off, and the commission will need the wisdom of Solomon if it is to satisfy both those who want religious exemptions reduced, and those suspicious souls who in their submissions called it ''the Freedom from Religion inquiry''
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/religious-intolerance-is-only-for-the-weak-20100917-15g65.html?comments=76#comments
Religious intolerance is only for the weak
Martin Flanagan
September 18, 2010
WHILE appearing to smoke joints rolled with pages from the Bible and the Koran in footage posted on YouTube, Brisbane atheist Alex Stewart had this to say: "With respect to books like the Bible and the Koran, whatever, just get over it.'' This could be a line from a Cheech and Chong movie. Stewart went on: ''Is this profanity? Is it blasphemy? Does it matter?'' Well, it matters to some people.
America right now is in strife in this regard. The issue of a Muslim community centre being built near the Ground Zero site is proving bitterly divisive. President Barack Obama stands in the middle trying to preserve calm, but a recent survey shows more Americans now believe Obama is a Muslim than when he was elected president. That's worrying. Even more worrying is that 60 per cent of those people said they got their idea from the media.
One of Obama's most vocal critics is media "personality" Glenn Beck. Last month, writing about a Beck "Restoring Honour" rally, celebrity journalist Christopher Hitchens said the upsurge in anti-Muslim feeling among white Americans reflected the fact that the day when they no longer constituted the majority of the American population was now within "thinkable distance".
Hitchens is also an atheist. In June, he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and announced that he was dying. This has led to him receiving a flood of emails from believers offering prayers on his behalf. One emailer called on him to convert to Christianity, saying he would be the biggest recruit to the cause since Saint Paul. Hitchens is the former Trotskyite who ended up championing the invasion of Iraq. Saint Paul is the former tax collector who became the early Christian church's great proselytiser.
The comparison is an intriguing one.
During last month's federal election, a young man told me he was voting for Tony Abbott because Julia Gillard had no family and Abbott did. He added, ''She's an atheist. She doesn't believe in anything.'' As a matter of logic, it doesn't follow that an atheist doesn't believe in anything. Generally, what characterises atheists is a radical disbelief in the story of divine behaviour attributed to the religious entity commonly called God.
In this respect, I am impressed by the Jewish practice of not using the word God. They write G-d and, in so doing, dismantle much of the argument before it begins. Most arguments about God are really arguments about ideas of God; about mental images of God (which might, in turn, be seen as examples of idolatry). It's a lot harder to imagine G-d than it is to imagine God.
During the election, I heard a woman who was against Gillard say that atheists didn't believe in anything outside themselves. But what if they believe, for example, in justice as a basic human right? And what if they believe that, in humankind, there is a capacity for good - along with all the other human capacities - that can be appealed to. These are beliefs in something both outside the individual and greater than the individual.
Debates about atheism tend to be boring. Like all conflicts to do with religion, they seem to end up with kindred spirits in passionate opposition to one another. A recent example was the Florida pastor who proposed burning the Koran because, in his view, it was not a book of peace - without appearing to realise he was committing an act of war. Earlier this week, the number of people said to have died in Kashmir as a result was already 19.
I understand people being attracted to atheism at this time. The great question asked by our age may indeed be: Is religion ultimately a blessing or a curse for humanity? But there is a fundamental difference between religion as an idea and a good person who's religious. I hope I show respect to good people wherever I meet them, and an age-old sign of respect is to avoid giving needless offence.
But there's also an argument here to do with global realpolitik. We have to find a way to live with one another, or what do we honestly expect is going to happen on our already overcrowded planet?
There are intellectuals who argue that conflict is inevitable, but the further such voices of reason live from the places where the conflicts are actually occurring, where thousands of civilians are being blown apart and bereaved, the less persuasive I find them. Some would say the position of tolerance I am arguing for is weak and based on an illusion. I say it is coldly pragmatic and may require all the strength we can muster.
Martin Flanagan is a senior writer.
Fellow Travellers & Useful Idiots.
[Those of us who survived Hitler and Nazism, Stalin and Communism know all about the dictators' 'fellow travellers' and their 'useful idiots'. But Islamic terrorists claim to be in the service of God screaming 'Allah Akhbar' as they detonate their homicide vests indiscriminately killing their own as well as 'infidels'. As God's 'fellow travellers', what can one call them? Which kind of God would call them 'useful'?
MM]
http://standpointmag.co.uk/features-sept-10-radical-islams-fellow-travellers-nick-cohen-tariq-ramadan
________________________________________
Radical Islam's Fellow-Travellers
Nick Cohen
September 2010
Contemplating with his customary scorn the artists who had embraced the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky wondered what it would take to break their attachment to a cause that would eventually murder many of them ¬ and kill Trotsky too, although he was yet to know it. "As regards a fellow-traveller," he said, "the question always comes up ¬ how far will he go?" Would the barbarism of the dictatorship of the proletariat persuade him to "change at one of the stations on to the train going the other way"? Or would he stay on for the rest of the ride?
As Trotsky implied, fellow-travelling with communism was not always akin to endorsing the creed. Communists accepted crimes committed in the name of the revolution without hesitation. The fellow-traveller looked away from communism's victims and invited others to do the same. Communists damned "bourgeois democracy". It disillusioned communism's fellow-travellers, too, but not enough to persuade them to give up on democratic politics completely and join the revolution. They wished the Soviet Union well and found its experiments on the human race bracing. But in the words of David Caute, the best historian of fellow-travelling, their support was a "commitment at a distance".
The reception given to Tariq Ramadan when he arrived in New York in April showed that today a type of fellow-travelling with radical Islam has spread from Europe to America. From the applause he drew, it seemed to me that no one involved would be changing trains for a while. The willingness of Ramadan's admirers to ignore the victims of totalitarianism was familiar but everything else was different. The readers of the New York Review of Books and the Nation, like the readers of Le Monde Diplomatique and the New Statesman, are not committing to radical Islam, even at a distance. They do not believe in the subjugation of women, the murder of homosexuals and apostates, the Jewish conspiracy theory and the creation of a theocratic empire in the way that communism's old fellow-travellers in socialism believed to varying degrees. The best they can manage is a feeble relativism. "But it's their culture to oppress women," they insist. "It's imperialist to impose Western human rights standards on others." For good reasons as well as bad, they hate the policies of their own governments. I accept that their denunciations can often give the impression that they want the Iranian mullahs or the Taliban to triumph. But with the exception of the far Left which has merged with the Islamist far Right, most don't think about what Islamism represents, let alone what a victory for Islamist forces would entail.
The absence of a positive commitment sets them apart from the intellectual friends of communism in the early- and mid-20th century. Modern fellow-travellers go along for a ride with ideas they would find repugnant if they could ever bring themselves to confront them.
The contortions the new ideology necessitates were on display at the Great Hall of Cooper Union College in Manhattan. The audience treated Ramadan as if he were a victim of oppression, which in a small way he was. The Bush administration had refused him permission to enter America in 2004. Citing the "ideological exclusion provisions of the Patriot Act", the State Department claimed that he had supported charities linked to Hamas. Ramadan did not suffer greatly. Oxford University, now a home for reactionary causes, made him its Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies, while the Labour government consulted him about how to deal with Islamic extremism. Quite properly, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American branch of PEN successfully lobbied the courts to have his travel ban lifted. They argued that their fellow citizens were grown-ups who were entitled to hear what Ramadan says.
Defending freedom of speech is one thing. Permissively ¬ or passively ¬ agreeing with the speaker is another. At the end of his session, a questioner asked Ramadan for his response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's feminist critique of Islam. Ramadan was scathing. Hirsi Ali believed that the only way to be a Muslim in an open society was to be an ex-Muslim, he replied. Her assertion that democracy and secularism were incompatible with Islam was very close "to what I get from racists" who target you "because you are a Muslim".
Racism is it now? Well, there's a charge to send a shiver of indignation down the spine of a well-bred liberal. The well-bred crowd in New York duly felt a righteous tingle run down theirs. They did not protest that Ramadan was making the schoolboy howler of confusing ethnicity ¬ which no one can change ¬ with religion, which is a system of ideas that men and women ought to be free to accept or reject. They did not reflect that in many countries dictatorial gangs asserted that because religion was an unalterable facet of a believer's personality, they could sentence to death those who chose of their own free will to change or reject it.
Nor did an angry official from PEN, an organisation dedicated to protecting writers from censorship, march on to the stage to tell Ramadan that if he wanted to talk about "targets" and "racism" then he ought to remember Ayaan Hirsi Ali had been targeted by Islamists trying to inflict the ultimate form of censorship on her. She first received death threats after protesting against the "honour killings" and female genital mutilations inflicted on immigrant women in Holland. She made a short film with the Dutch director Theo van Gogh in which he projected misogynist verses from the Koran on to the bodies of actresses playing abused women. For this, Mohammed Bouyeri slaughtered him in the street. With his dagger he pinned a raving letter to Hirsi Ali on to the bloodied corpse. Over five sheets, he explained that she must die because she was "a soldier of evil" doing the work of her "Jewish masters".
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a Somali asylum-seeker from a Muslim family. By speaking out against the oppression of women, she underwent a supernatural transformation. In the eyes of her potential murderers, she at once became a Jew or a Jewish dupe, the agent of a diabolical, and familiar, conspiracy by the Elders of Zion to annihilate Islam and control the world. Ever since, she has had to live with that threat that other murderers will make good on Bouyeri's promise to kill her. When I last saw her in London, an IRA man who had gone over to the British side was using his knowledge of the terrorist mind to organise her security. No one present thought she was being over-cautious or that he was making a fuss about nothing.
Her plight is well known, even in Manhattan, but not one timorous voice objected to Ramadan accusing a woman whose friend had been murdered by racists and who still needed security guards to protect her from racists, of being close to being a racist herself. The audience instead gave him a hearty round of applause.
The unthinking immorality of their reaction, its parochialism and boorishness, provides a fitting backdrop to the controversy about how Western liberals are responding to the challenge of armed and belligerent reaction. Ramadan and Hirsi Ali both have new books out. Meanwhile, Paul Berman has produced a lucid assault on the double-dealing of the Anglo-American intelligentsia. He weaves its response to Ramadan and Hirsi Ali into the history of how Ramadan's grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, mingled the ideas of European fascism with religion in the early years of the Muslim Brotherhood to produce the one of the first authentically Islamist movements. Berman's Flight of the Intellectuals (Melville House) has in turn provoked a furious and unintentionally revealing reaction from the New York literary press, which I have no doubt will have led a delighted Berman to hug himself and say "I told you so".
When picking your way through the argument, it is as important to keep your eye on the critics of liberal orthodoxy as the orthodox themselves. Unlike many of his opponents, I do not believe that it is now fair to describe Ramadan as an Islamist. Whatever he believed in the past, no militant in the Muslim Brotherhood could have written a book like his latest, The Quest for Meaning (Allen Lane). It does not seek to cast a cloak of academic respectability over the justifications for wife-beating, female genital mutilation, the execution of homosexuals and the mass murder of the Jews that come from the Brotherhood's pre-eminent scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. It does not appear to be the work of any kind of sectarian, but rather of a turgid ecumenicist. Platitudes stumble through its pages like weary travellers looking for rest. "We have to become adults whether we like it or not," he says of growing old. "The first steps are indeed the hardest," he says of the spiritual journey he wishes us to follow. After reading the first chapters, I had to concede he was right. He examines competing religions and finds in true Thought for the Day fashion that what unites them is more important than what divides them. If only everyone recognised the common ground, we would understand "the other as he is, his way of thinking, his emotional and affective reactions from where he stands without prejudging anything". Like Dr Casaubon, Ramadan has produced a Key to All Mythologies, which is as dry and pedantic in life as it was in George Eliot's fiction.
Only if you read him closely do you grasp why so many French thinkers regarded him with suspicion before he moved to Britain. For what does he mean when he says we should not prejudge "the other"? Ramadan studied at Geneva University and the continental school of philosophy rarely teaches its students the virtues of clarity. On one question, however, Ramadan speaks plainly. The religious tolerance of the Enlightenment is not good enough for him. Tolerance means suffering the presence of "the other", he says. Only when we move from tolerance to respect will we "recognise that the other is as complex as we are; he is our equal, our mirror, our question".
Forget the sanctimonious sentiments for a moment. Forget, too, that Ramadan refuses to condemn or even mention the religious oppression and violence in much of the Muslim world, and consider what he is asking us to throw away. Religious tolerance received its classic Enlightenment definition in Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1777: "No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever...All men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion."
Jefferson's key phrase was "by argument". Toleration did not limit debate but removed the barriers of state and church that had stood in debate's way. Argument is not in its nature always respectful of "the other's" point of view. At its best, it is robust and demanding. Ramadan's insistence on "respect" is a way of erecting new barriers in place of old, of ruling debates off limits.
He has been saying throughout his career that we must bite our tongues. He left France after Nicolas Sarkozy challenged him on TV to condemn outright the stoning to death of adulterous women. Ramadan could not do it. The best he could manage was to mutter that he wished to see a "moratorium" on religious murder. The French journalist Caroline Fourest described his tendency to look liberal while refusing come out against anti-liberal causes as "Ramadan's double-speak". He appears not to condone Qaradawi's cruelty, then appears to ally with Qaradawi. He appears to condemn Islamist violence to one audience, but not to another.
The BBC provided an example of what replacing argument with respect means in practice when it invited him to debate the burqa and niqab with the Anglo-Egyptian campaigner for women's rights Mona Eltahawy. She complained that Western governments had abandoned Muslim liberals and allowed Wahhabi and Salafist ideologues to impose their dehumanising ideas on Muslim women. To shroud them in black. To make them invisible. Europe left the public sphere "completely uncontested to the Muslim right wing which does not respect anyone's rights whatsoever except for this one right to cover a woman's face. No one has pushed back against the Muslim right wing. I detest the political right wing [she meant European nativist and racist parties] but I equally detest the Muslim right wing and I will not sacrifice women to it."
Ramadan's response was instructive. He refused to accept that there was a reactionary strain in Islam ¬ the "Muslim right wing" to use Eltahawy's term ¬ and brushed her complaints away with impatience. Some scholars supported covering up women, he said. He disagreed with them. He was, after all, an Oxford don and darling of the ACLU and PEN crowd. However, he insisted that not only was it illiberal for states to legislate against the burqa, a position I have sympathy with, but that it was wrong to take on the "Muslim right wing" or even to admit that a "Muslim right wing" existed. Contrary to Jefferson, Eltahawy could not engage in argument and "maintain opinions in matters of religion". Respect prohibited it.
Accusations of betrayal, of selling out or of becoming a craven compromiser flow too readily from leftish lips. Tony Blair was on the receiving end of this kind of abuse when he was in power. Barack Obama is now getting the same treatment from American liberals. In matters of violent religion, however, large swathes of liberal opinion are desperate to sell out. Ever since Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the murders and atrocious injuries Islamists inflicted on the translators of The Satanic Verses, they have known that standing up for liberal values takes a physical courage they are not sure they possess. Since 9/11, they have noticed how widespread support for elements of Islamism has become not only in the Middle East and Asia but in European immigrant communities too. They know that there are many people out there who might take a shot at them if they stuck their heads above the parapet. They rarely admit it, but they are frightened of what challenging conspiracy theories and the oppression of women might entail.
They welcome Ramadan because he gets them out of the hole. He gives them liberal-sounding reasons in reassuringly clunky PC language to excuse the abandonment of liberal causes. Just as pleasingly, he helps them find novel ways to condemn those who stay true to liberal values as culturally insensitive neo-cons, who are close to being racists.
Berman maps the consequences. With a justifiably brutal relentlessness he shows how fear of Islamism leads liberals to turn on men and women. As a case study, Berman contrasts the indulgence offered to Ramadan with the treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Timothy Garton Ash and Ian Buruma in the pages of the New York Review of Books and the New York Times.
Unlike Ramadan, Hirsi Ali is straightforward. You do not have to consult a dictionary or phone a friend before trying to guess her meaning. She is a liberal feminist, and does not attempt to hide it. She has no need for artifice or double-talk. The clarity of her writing reflects the clarity of her purpose.
Her feminism comes from experience. She has described her own genital mutilation and the botched genital mutilation of her sister, her horror, as a girl, at seeing the women of Saudi Arabia for the first time, their faces hidden by veils and their black robes hanging so shapelessly that you had to see which way their shoes were pointing to know which way they were looking. She has written of the shelters for abused Muslim women in Holland, of the terrors of refugee existence and the double terrors of refugee existence for women. "All these passages express something that can never be detected in a certain kind of high-minded cerebral journalism today," says Berman. "It is a visceral anger at oppression...You do not have to wonder: where does she stand on the ques-tion of stoning women to death? Or on the obligation for husbands to beat their wives? Read one page by her and you will know the answer."
Liberals hated her for her moral clarity. Buruma and Garton Ash denounced her for being crude, zealous, strident, humourless, ineffective and contemptuous of others. She was an "Enlightenment fundamentalist", as bigoted in her insistence that women should not be stoned to death as those Islamist fundamentalists who insisted that they should.
Parallels with the 20th century struck me on every page. Susan Sontag, a former president of American PEN who defended Rushdie with a vigour her successors cannot match, scandalised leftish New Yorkers when she addressed a town hall meeting as the Soviet empire was starting to crumble under pressure from Poland's Solidarity trade union. Imagine, she told the assembled fellow-travellers as she tried to dissolve their illusions, "the preposterous case of somebody who read only the Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and somebody else who read only the Nation between 1950 and 1970. Who would be getting more truth about the nature of communism? There's no doubt it would have been the Reader's Digest reader."
Berman pays an unwitting tribute to Sontag when he concludes by noticing that Garton Ash had patronised Hirsi Ali in the New York Review of Books by implying that the attention she received owed more to her striking beauty than the quality of her thought. Why, Garton Ash snickered, Glamour magazine had made her its "hero of the month".
He left an open goal and Berman tapped the ball into the net. "I can't help observing that Glamour magazine nowadays offers a more reliable guide to liberal principles than the New York Review of Books," he replied.
If I were editing the New York Review of Books, I would take a long sabbatical if anyone had been able to say that about pieces I had commissioned. (Even Garton Ash recoiled at what he had done and apologised to Hirsi Ali.) But I would still protest that Ramadan, Garton Ash and Buruma might have a case when they said that only Muslims could reform Islam. It might not be true ¬ wider cultural changes might be more important than disputes among the faithful ¬ but at least it is not a disgraceful viewpoint, and that makes a welcome change. The New York Review of Books maintained that Ayaan Hirsi Ali ruled herself out of the argument because she manifested her intolerant "Enlightenment fundamentalism" by responding to the mutilation of her genitals, the murder of her friend and threats to her life by giving up on Islam and becoming an atheist. Unfortunately for them, at no point did they go on to say that across Europe, there remained avowedly Muslim politicians, writers, artists, journalists and activists who have tried to oppose Islamists and received death threats and physical assaults in response. Their cause ought to be a liberal cause, but the evidence from the New York Review of Books' most recent take on Ramadan, Hirsi Ali and Berman is that liberals have yet to learn that it is their moral duty to support them against their enemies.
Malise Ruthven, who once wrote perceptive books on the sociology of religion, denounces Berman in its pages. (I suppose it was asking too much to expect a rave review in the circumstances.) He has no time for Berman's argument that Islamism was something new in Islam's history because it was an amalgamation of religion with ideas and methods taken from European totalitarianism. And, by extension, no time for the notion that the victims of Islamism are the victims of clerical fascist movements.
Berman is guilty of "ignoring nuances", Ruthven says gravely. He constructs a crude "totalitarian model" to explain the thinking of al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood and Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Jama'at-e-Islami, the Brotherhood's South Asian sister party.
Ruthven's mention of Jama'at made me pause. I knew it to be the ancestor of the Islamist groups that terrorise Pakistan and India and have a pernicious influence on British Islam. In Dacca, war crimes prosecutors have just reminded us of its dark history in Bangladesh and indicted several of its Bengali leaders on charges of participating in the Pakistani army's campaign of mass murder and mass rape in the 1971 war of independence. I knew I had read a good description of Jama'at's totalitarian nature ¬ but where? I reached for my bookshelf and by good fortune found a copy of A Satanic Affair, Malise Ruthven's 1991 account of the persecution of Rushdie. Jama'at began the bloody riots against The Satanic Verses, he explained. No one who had studied the thought of its founder should be surprised that it attracted know-nothing book-burners to its ranks. "Strongly influenced by the political climate of the 1930s, Maududi cited Italian Fascists, German Nazis and Russian Communists as examples of small, informed and dedicated groups capable of seizing power and exercising it effectively," Ruthven explained. "While disagreeing with their ideologies, he admired their methods."
In 1991, he was able to recognise totalitarianism and call it by its real name. In 2010, he condemns those who follow the example of his younger and better self. Like so many others, he has boarded the train. I hope that a few of his fellow-passengers will jump off soon, while accepting that the lesson of history is that most of them will.
MM]
http://standpointmag.co.uk/features-sept-10-radical-islams-fellow-travellers-nick-cohen-tariq-ramadan
________________________________________
Radical Islam's Fellow-Travellers
Nick Cohen
September 2010
Contemplating with his customary scorn the artists who had embraced the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky wondered what it would take to break their attachment to a cause that would eventually murder many of them ¬ and kill Trotsky too, although he was yet to know it. "As regards a fellow-traveller," he said, "the question always comes up ¬ how far will he go?" Would the barbarism of the dictatorship of the proletariat persuade him to "change at one of the stations on to the train going the other way"? Or would he stay on for the rest of the ride?
As Trotsky implied, fellow-travelling with communism was not always akin to endorsing the creed. Communists accepted crimes committed in the name of the revolution without hesitation. The fellow-traveller looked away from communism's victims and invited others to do the same. Communists damned "bourgeois democracy". It disillusioned communism's fellow-travellers, too, but not enough to persuade them to give up on democratic politics completely and join the revolution. They wished the Soviet Union well and found its experiments on the human race bracing. But in the words of David Caute, the best historian of fellow-travelling, their support was a "commitment at a distance".
The reception given to Tariq Ramadan when he arrived in New York in April showed that today a type of fellow-travelling with radical Islam has spread from Europe to America. From the applause he drew, it seemed to me that no one involved would be changing trains for a while. The willingness of Ramadan's admirers to ignore the victims of totalitarianism was familiar but everything else was different. The readers of the New York Review of Books and the Nation, like the readers of Le Monde Diplomatique and the New Statesman, are not committing to radical Islam, even at a distance. They do not believe in the subjugation of women, the murder of homosexuals and apostates, the Jewish conspiracy theory and the creation of a theocratic empire in the way that communism's old fellow-travellers in socialism believed to varying degrees. The best they can manage is a feeble relativism. "But it's their culture to oppress women," they insist. "It's imperialist to impose Western human rights standards on others." For good reasons as well as bad, they hate the policies of their own governments. I accept that their denunciations can often give the impression that they want the Iranian mullahs or the Taliban to triumph. But with the exception of the far Left which has merged with the Islamist far Right, most don't think about what Islamism represents, let alone what a victory for Islamist forces would entail.
The absence of a positive commitment sets them apart from the intellectual friends of communism in the early- and mid-20th century. Modern fellow-travellers go along for a ride with ideas they would find repugnant if they could ever bring themselves to confront them.
The contortions the new ideology necessitates were on display at the Great Hall of Cooper Union College in Manhattan. The audience treated Ramadan as if he were a victim of oppression, which in a small way he was. The Bush administration had refused him permission to enter America in 2004. Citing the "ideological exclusion provisions of the Patriot Act", the State Department claimed that he had supported charities linked to Hamas. Ramadan did not suffer greatly. Oxford University, now a home for reactionary causes, made him its Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies, while the Labour government consulted him about how to deal with Islamic extremism. Quite properly, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American branch of PEN successfully lobbied the courts to have his travel ban lifted. They argued that their fellow citizens were grown-ups who were entitled to hear what Ramadan says.
Defending freedom of speech is one thing. Permissively ¬ or passively ¬ agreeing with the speaker is another. At the end of his session, a questioner asked Ramadan for his response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's feminist critique of Islam. Ramadan was scathing. Hirsi Ali believed that the only way to be a Muslim in an open society was to be an ex-Muslim, he replied. Her assertion that democracy and secularism were incompatible with Islam was very close "to what I get from racists" who target you "because you are a Muslim".
Racism is it now? Well, there's a charge to send a shiver of indignation down the spine of a well-bred liberal. The well-bred crowd in New York duly felt a righteous tingle run down theirs. They did not protest that Ramadan was making the schoolboy howler of confusing ethnicity ¬ which no one can change ¬ with religion, which is a system of ideas that men and women ought to be free to accept or reject. They did not reflect that in many countries dictatorial gangs asserted that because religion was an unalterable facet of a believer's personality, they could sentence to death those who chose of their own free will to change or reject it.
Nor did an angry official from PEN, an organisation dedicated to protecting writers from censorship, march on to the stage to tell Ramadan that if he wanted to talk about "targets" and "racism" then he ought to remember Ayaan Hirsi Ali had been targeted by Islamists trying to inflict the ultimate form of censorship on her. She first received death threats after protesting against the "honour killings" and female genital mutilations inflicted on immigrant women in Holland. She made a short film with the Dutch director Theo van Gogh in which he projected misogynist verses from the Koran on to the bodies of actresses playing abused women. For this, Mohammed Bouyeri slaughtered him in the street. With his dagger he pinned a raving letter to Hirsi Ali on to the bloodied corpse. Over five sheets, he explained that she must die because she was "a soldier of evil" doing the work of her "Jewish masters".
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a Somali asylum-seeker from a Muslim family. By speaking out against the oppression of women, she underwent a supernatural transformation. In the eyes of her potential murderers, she at once became a Jew or a Jewish dupe, the agent of a diabolical, and familiar, conspiracy by the Elders of Zion to annihilate Islam and control the world. Ever since, she has had to live with that threat that other murderers will make good on Bouyeri's promise to kill her. When I last saw her in London, an IRA man who had gone over to the British side was using his knowledge of the terrorist mind to organise her security. No one present thought she was being over-cautious or that he was making a fuss about nothing.
Her plight is well known, even in Manhattan, but not one timorous voice objected to Ramadan accusing a woman whose friend had been murdered by racists and who still needed security guards to protect her from racists, of being close to being a racist herself. The audience instead gave him a hearty round of applause.
The unthinking immorality of their reaction, its parochialism and boorishness, provides a fitting backdrop to the controversy about how Western liberals are responding to the challenge of armed and belligerent reaction. Ramadan and Hirsi Ali both have new books out. Meanwhile, Paul Berman has produced a lucid assault on the double-dealing of the Anglo-American intelligentsia. He weaves its response to Ramadan and Hirsi Ali into the history of how Ramadan's grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, mingled the ideas of European fascism with religion in the early years of the Muslim Brotherhood to produce the one of the first authentically Islamist movements. Berman's Flight of the Intellectuals (Melville House) has in turn provoked a furious and unintentionally revealing reaction from the New York literary press, which I have no doubt will have led a delighted Berman to hug himself and say "I told you so".
When picking your way through the argument, it is as important to keep your eye on the critics of liberal orthodoxy as the orthodox themselves. Unlike many of his opponents, I do not believe that it is now fair to describe Ramadan as an Islamist. Whatever he believed in the past, no militant in the Muslim Brotherhood could have written a book like his latest, The Quest for Meaning (Allen Lane). It does not seek to cast a cloak of academic respectability over the justifications for wife-beating, female genital mutilation, the execution of homosexuals and the mass murder of the Jews that come from the Brotherhood's pre-eminent scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. It does not appear to be the work of any kind of sectarian, but rather of a turgid ecumenicist. Platitudes stumble through its pages like weary travellers looking for rest. "We have to become adults whether we like it or not," he says of growing old. "The first steps are indeed the hardest," he says of the spiritual journey he wishes us to follow. After reading the first chapters, I had to concede he was right. He examines competing religions and finds in true Thought for the Day fashion that what unites them is more important than what divides them. If only everyone recognised the common ground, we would understand "the other as he is, his way of thinking, his emotional and affective reactions from where he stands without prejudging anything". Like Dr Casaubon, Ramadan has produced a Key to All Mythologies, which is as dry and pedantic in life as it was in George Eliot's fiction.
Only if you read him closely do you grasp why so many French thinkers regarded him with suspicion before he moved to Britain. For what does he mean when he says we should not prejudge "the other"? Ramadan studied at Geneva University and the continental school of philosophy rarely teaches its students the virtues of clarity. On one question, however, Ramadan speaks plainly. The religious tolerance of the Enlightenment is not good enough for him. Tolerance means suffering the presence of "the other", he says. Only when we move from tolerance to respect will we "recognise that the other is as complex as we are; he is our equal, our mirror, our question".
Forget the sanctimonious sentiments for a moment. Forget, too, that Ramadan refuses to condemn or even mention the religious oppression and violence in much of the Muslim world, and consider what he is asking us to throw away. Religious tolerance received its classic Enlightenment definition in Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom of 1777: "No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever...All men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion."
Jefferson's key phrase was "by argument". Toleration did not limit debate but removed the barriers of state and church that had stood in debate's way. Argument is not in its nature always respectful of "the other's" point of view. At its best, it is robust and demanding. Ramadan's insistence on "respect" is a way of erecting new barriers in place of old, of ruling debates off limits.
He has been saying throughout his career that we must bite our tongues. He left France after Nicolas Sarkozy challenged him on TV to condemn outright the stoning to death of adulterous women. Ramadan could not do it. The best he could manage was to mutter that he wished to see a "moratorium" on religious murder. The French journalist Caroline Fourest described his tendency to look liberal while refusing come out against anti-liberal causes as "Ramadan's double-speak". He appears not to condone Qaradawi's cruelty, then appears to ally with Qaradawi. He appears to condemn Islamist violence to one audience, but not to another.
The BBC provided an example of what replacing argument with respect means in practice when it invited him to debate the burqa and niqab with the Anglo-Egyptian campaigner for women's rights Mona Eltahawy. She complained that Western governments had abandoned Muslim liberals and allowed Wahhabi and Salafist ideologues to impose their dehumanising ideas on Muslim women. To shroud them in black. To make them invisible. Europe left the public sphere "completely uncontested to the Muslim right wing which does not respect anyone's rights whatsoever except for this one right to cover a woman's face. No one has pushed back against the Muslim right wing. I detest the political right wing [she meant European nativist and racist parties] but I equally detest the Muslim right wing and I will not sacrifice women to it."
Ramadan's response was instructive. He refused to accept that there was a reactionary strain in Islam ¬ the "Muslim right wing" to use Eltahawy's term ¬ and brushed her complaints away with impatience. Some scholars supported covering up women, he said. He disagreed with them. He was, after all, an Oxford don and darling of the ACLU and PEN crowd. However, he insisted that not only was it illiberal for states to legislate against the burqa, a position I have sympathy with, but that it was wrong to take on the "Muslim right wing" or even to admit that a "Muslim right wing" existed. Contrary to Jefferson, Eltahawy could not engage in argument and "maintain opinions in matters of religion". Respect prohibited it.
Accusations of betrayal, of selling out or of becoming a craven compromiser flow too readily from leftish lips. Tony Blair was on the receiving end of this kind of abuse when he was in power. Barack Obama is now getting the same treatment from American liberals. In matters of violent religion, however, large swathes of liberal opinion are desperate to sell out. Ever since Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the murders and atrocious injuries Islamists inflicted on the translators of The Satanic Verses, they have known that standing up for liberal values takes a physical courage they are not sure they possess. Since 9/11, they have noticed how widespread support for elements of Islamism has become not only in the Middle East and Asia but in European immigrant communities too. They know that there are many people out there who might take a shot at them if they stuck their heads above the parapet. They rarely admit it, but they are frightened of what challenging conspiracy theories and the oppression of women might entail.
They welcome Ramadan because he gets them out of the hole. He gives them liberal-sounding reasons in reassuringly clunky PC language to excuse the abandonment of liberal causes. Just as pleasingly, he helps them find novel ways to condemn those who stay true to liberal values as culturally insensitive neo-cons, who are close to being racists.
Berman maps the consequences. With a justifiably brutal relentlessness he shows how fear of Islamism leads liberals to turn on men and women. As a case study, Berman contrasts the indulgence offered to Ramadan with the treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Timothy Garton Ash and Ian Buruma in the pages of the New York Review of Books and the New York Times.
Unlike Ramadan, Hirsi Ali is straightforward. You do not have to consult a dictionary or phone a friend before trying to guess her meaning. She is a liberal feminist, and does not attempt to hide it. She has no need for artifice or double-talk. The clarity of her writing reflects the clarity of her purpose.
Her feminism comes from experience. She has described her own genital mutilation and the botched genital mutilation of her sister, her horror, as a girl, at seeing the women of Saudi Arabia for the first time, their faces hidden by veils and their black robes hanging so shapelessly that you had to see which way their shoes were pointing to know which way they were looking. She has written of the shelters for abused Muslim women in Holland, of the terrors of refugee existence and the double terrors of refugee existence for women. "All these passages express something that can never be detected in a certain kind of high-minded cerebral journalism today," says Berman. "It is a visceral anger at oppression...You do not have to wonder: where does she stand on the ques-tion of stoning women to death? Or on the obligation for husbands to beat their wives? Read one page by her and you will know the answer."
Liberals hated her for her moral clarity. Buruma and Garton Ash denounced her for being crude, zealous, strident, humourless, ineffective and contemptuous of others. She was an "Enlightenment fundamentalist", as bigoted in her insistence that women should not be stoned to death as those Islamist fundamentalists who insisted that they should.
Parallels with the 20th century struck me on every page. Susan Sontag, a former president of American PEN who defended Rushdie with a vigour her successors cannot match, scandalised leftish New Yorkers when she addressed a town hall meeting as the Soviet empire was starting to crumble under pressure from Poland's Solidarity trade union. Imagine, she told the assembled fellow-travellers as she tried to dissolve their illusions, "the preposterous case of somebody who read only the Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and somebody else who read only the Nation between 1950 and 1970. Who would be getting more truth about the nature of communism? There's no doubt it would have been the Reader's Digest reader."
Berman pays an unwitting tribute to Sontag when he concludes by noticing that Garton Ash had patronised Hirsi Ali in the New York Review of Books by implying that the attention she received owed more to her striking beauty than the quality of her thought. Why, Garton Ash snickered, Glamour magazine had made her its "hero of the month".
He left an open goal and Berman tapped the ball into the net. "I can't help observing that Glamour magazine nowadays offers a more reliable guide to liberal principles than the New York Review of Books," he replied.
If I were editing the New York Review of Books, I would take a long sabbatical if anyone had been able to say that about pieces I had commissioned. (Even Garton Ash recoiled at what he had done and apologised to Hirsi Ali.) But I would still protest that Ramadan, Garton Ash and Buruma might have a case when they said that only Muslims could reform Islam. It might not be true ¬ wider cultural changes might be more important than disputes among the faithful ¬ but at least it is not a disgraceful viewpoint, and that makes a welcome change. The New York Review of Books maintained that Ayaan Hirsi Ali ruled herself out of the argument because she manifested her intolerant "Enlightenment fundamentalism" by responding to the mutilation of her genitals, the murder of her friend and threats to her life by giving up on Islam and becoming an atheist. Unfortunately for them, at no point did they go on to say that across Europe, there remained avowedly Muslim politicians, writers, artists, journalists and activists who have tried to oppose Islamists and received death threats and physical assaults in response. Their cause ought to be a liberal cause, but the evidence from the New York Review of Books' most recent take on Ramadan, Hirsi Ali and Berman is that liberals have yet to learn that it is their moral duty to support them against their enemies.
Malise Ruthven, who once wrote perceptive books on the sociology of religion, denounces Berman in its pages. (I suppose it was asking too much to expect a rave review in the circumstances.) He has no time for Berman's argument that Islamism was something new in Islam's history because it was an amalgamation of religion with ideas and methods taken from European totalitarianism. And, by extension, no time for the notion that the victims of Islamism are the victims of clerical fascist movements.
Berman is guilty of "ignoring nuances", Ruthven says gravely. He constructs a crude "totalitarian model" to explain the thinking of al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood and Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Jama'at-e-Islami, the Brotherhood's South Asian sister party.
Ruthven's mention of Jama'at made me pause. I knew it to be the ancestor of the Islamist groups that terrorise Pakistan and India and have a pernicious influence on British Islam. In Dacca, war crimes prosecutors have just reminded us of its dark history in Bangladesh and indicted several of its Bengali leaders on charges of participating in the Pakistani army's campaign of mass murder and mass rape in the 1971 war of independence. I knew I had read a good description of Jama'at's totalitarian nature ¬ but where? I reached for my bookshelf and by good fortune found a copy of A Satanic Affair, Malise Ruthven's 1991 account of the persecution of Rushdie. Jama'at began the bloody riots against The Satanic Verses, he explained. No one who had studied the thought of its founder should be surprised that it attracted know-nothing book-burners to its ranks. "Strongly influenced by the political climate of the 1930s, Maududi cited Italian Fascists, German Nazis and Russian Communists as examples of small, informed and dedicated groups capable of seizing power and exercising it effectively," Ruthven explained. "While disagreeing with their ideologies, he admired their methods."
In 1991, he was able to recognise totalitarianism and call it by its real name. In 2010, he condemns those who follow the example of his younger and better self. Like so many others, he has boarded the train. I hope that a few of his fellow-passengers will jump off soon, while accepting that the lesson of history is that most of them will.
Thursday, September 09, 2010
SHANA TOVA. Happy New Year 5771
On Rosh Hashana it is written:
on Yom Kippur it is sealed:
How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be;
who shall live, who shall die;
who shall see ripe age, who shall not;
who shall perish by fire, who by water;
who by sword, who by beast;
who by hunger, who by thirst;
who by earthquake, who by plague;
who by strangling, who by stoning;
who shall be secure, who shall be driven;
who shall be tranquil, who shall be troubled;
who shall be poor. who shall be rich;
who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted.
Every year as I read these words, I cannot help wondering,- who are those in my family, friends, country,- to whom do these predictions refer for the following year?
We know last year's results:Australians have suffered from fire first and now water; New Zealanders have just overcome the earthquake,- but luckily except for the disastrous fires, no loss of life from the other natural disasters.
Did we think that stoning belonged to the dark ages of the past? Not so for the poor mother awaiting her fate in Iran,who still doesn't know whether she will be strangled or stoned,- but her leaders, Ahmadinejahd doesn't seem to be troubled, nor driven,- hopefully he won't reach his old age! Let G-d smite him with his own sword, sooner rather than later!
Poor Africans are dying of thirst and hunger in droves, women and children are raped daily, - but the evil ones are neither humbled nor smitten in too many parts of the world.
G-d must be very busy keeping up with all the natural disasters on the one hand and all the evils perpetrated by humans' inhumanity to humans on the other!The suffering of the poor trafficked women and children is not ordained,-they are just cruelly taken advantage of, due to their weaknesses. May G-d give them the strength to overcome their miseries and may the free world eliminate this tragedy.
So we continue with our prayer for peace and for humanity:
"Grant peace and happiness, blessing and mercy, to all Israel and all the world.Bless us o G-d, all of us together, with the light of your presence, for in the light of Your presence we have found (or hope to find!)the love of mercy,the law of justice,and the way of peace: for it is ever Your will that the people of Israel shall be (finally) blessed with peace.
Teach us to labour for righteousness and inscribe us in the book of life, blessing and peace."
THE SOUND OF THE SHOFAR HERALDS THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LUNAR YEAR AND THE DAWN OF, HOPEFULLY A BETTER ONE THAN THE LAST ONE, FOR THE WHOLE WORLD.
Miriam M.
on Yom Kippur it is sealed:
How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be;
who shall live, who shall die;
who shall see ripe age, who shall not;
who shall perish by fire, who by water;
who by sword, who by beast;
who by hunger, who by thirst;
who by earthquake, who by plague;
who by strangling, who by stoning;
who shall be secure, who shall be driven;
who shall be tranquil, who shall be troubled;
who shall be poor. who shall be rich;
who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted.
Every year as I read these words, I cannot help wondering,- who are those in my family, friends, country,- to whom do these predictions refer for the following year?
We know last year's results:Australians have suffered from fire first and now water; New Zealanders have just overcome the earthquake,- but luckily except for the disastrous fires, no loss of life from the other natural disasters.
Did we think that stoning belonged to the dark ages of the past? Not so for the poor mother awaiting her fate in Iran,who still doesn't know whether she will be strangled or stoned,- but her leaders, Ahmadinejahd doesn't seem to be troubled, nor driven,- hopefully he won't reach his old age! Let G-d smite him with his own sword, sooner rather than later!
Poor Africans are dying of thirst and hunger in droves, women and children are raped daily, - but the evil ones are neither humbled nor smitten in too many parts of the world.
G-d must be very busy keeping up with all the natural disasters on the one hand and all the evils perpetrated by humans' inhumanity to humans on the other!The suffering of the poor trafficked women and children is not ordained,-they are just cruelly taken advantage of, due to their weaknesses. May G-d give them the strength to overcome their miseries and may the free world eliminate this tragedy.
So we continue with our prayer for peace and for humanity:
"Grant peace and happiness, blessing and mercy, to all Israel and all the world.Bless us o G-d, all of us together, with the light of your presence, for in the light of Your presence we have found (or hope to find!)the love of mercy,the law of justice,and the way of peace: for it is ever Your will that the people of Israel shall be (finally) blessed with peace.
Teach us to labour for righteousness and inscribe us in the book of life, blessing and peace."
THE SOUND OF THE SHOFAR HERALDS THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LUNAR YEAR AND THE DAWN OF, HOPEFULLY A BETTER ONE THAN THE LAST ONE, FOR THE WHOLE WORLD.
Miriam M.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Welcome first Australian female Prime Minister: Julia Gillard.
8/9/2010.
Today, caretaker PM, Julia Gillard (Labor Party)was given the mantle to continue as PM and the leader of the minority Government in her own right,rather than one appointed by her Party on the resignation of the previously elected PM, Kevin Rudd.
The required number of Independent MHRs sided with her over the Coalition parties, giving her the barest of majorities,- probably of just one! Will this Government be stable? Will it last the distance,- in spite of all the assurances? Somehow I doubt it!
Given that Tony Abbott is considered the best and most successful Opposition leader ever, now that he will continue in Opposition, I cannot see that he will not use any opportunity that will present itself to create havoc in the government ranks.
The Independents have enjoyed enormous power and media exposure for the last few weeks since the election and no doubt are looking forward to continue being in the limelight. Personally, I am not convinced that if they play upon this new-found power too much, that the major Parties will not combine to thwart them in the end.
Do we the people of Australia really want to be held to ransom by a few individual representatives from the rural areas on the one hand and by the minority Green Party in the Senate after next year on the other,- influencing such issues as Foreign Affairs, defence, immigration, taxes,plus a whole host of important issues which will determine the future stability and security of our Nation?
In the end,- will the Labor Party really want to be beholden to these individuals when going before the people to the next election? It will be the Liberals who will be able to say "we are the only independent Party and we ask for a mandate to govern in our own right!"
PM Gillard being a woman notwithstanding, I am glad that it is Tony Abbott who is in the Opposition. I fear the influence of the Independents and the Greens on the Government of the day and I look to the Liberals to make sure they don't mess us up!
MM
Today, caretaker PM, Julia Gillard (Labor Party)was given the mantle to continue as PM and the leader of the minority Government in her own right,rather than one appointed by her Party on the resignation of the previously elected PM, Kevin Rudd.
The required number of Independent MHRs sided with her over the Coalition parties, giving her the barest of majorities,- probably of just one! Will this Government be stable? Will it last the distance,- in spite of all the assurances? Somehow I doubt it!
Given that Tony Abbott is considered the best and most successful Opposition leader ever, now that he will continue in Opposition, I cannot see that he will not use any opportunity that will present itself to create havoc in the government ranks.
The Independents have enjoyed enormous power and media exposure for the last few weeks since the election and no doubt are looking forward to continue being in the limelight. Personally, I am not convinced that if they play upon this new-found power too much, that the major Parties will not combine to thwart them in the end.
Do we the people of Australia really want to be held to ransom by a few individual representatives from the rural areas on the one hand and by the minority Green Party in the Senate after next year on the other,- influencing such issues as Foreign Affairs, defence, immigration, taxes,plus a whole host of important issues which will determine the future stability and security of our Nation?
In the end,- will the Labor Party really want to be beholden to these individuals when going before the people to the next election? It will be the Liberals who will be able to say "we are the only independent Party and we ask for a mandate to govern in our own right!"
PM Gillard being a woman notwithstanding, I am glad that it is Tony Abbott who is in the Opposition. I fear the influence of the Independents and the Greens on the Government of the day and I look to the Liberals to make sure they don't mess us up!
MM
The menace of men who hate women
* David Aaronovitch
* From: The Australian
* August 16, 2010
IMAGINE for a moment that terrorist violence was, as some insist,
linked to real grievances.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-menace-of-men-who-hate-women/story-e6frg6ux-1225905590147
Think what the women of the world might do to some of the men.
Let's say the Iranian authorities, who insist they will not be "swayed
by the hue and cry in the West", do hang or stone Sakineh Mohammadi
Ashtiani for alleged adultery and murder. Would any Iranian diplomat
be safe from the avenging female army?
Or the husband of Aisha, and the Taliban judge who ordered him to cut
off his young wife's nose and ears after she dared to run away from
her spouse's violence. What might the women's mujaheddin do to them?
Set fire to their beards and cut off slowly the attributes they
imagined conferred on them the right to mutilate another human being?
And the executioners of the nameless woman of Badghis. Or say Mullah
Daoud, the Taliban big cheese who was one of three judges who declared
that a widow who had become pregnant must be an adultress, and should
be flogged in public until nearly dead and then shot in the head. "We
gave this decision so that in future no one should have these illegal
affairs," the mullah said, although no man has been punished.
The "Revolutionary Women's Command", unable to locate the mullah,
would simply target any male in any country with a Pashtun name. "You
must learn to suffer as we have suffered," a video made by a woman in
a burka would say.
The cases are real, the fantasies of revenge are not. In some ways I
wish they were. If only you could take these bearded, yelling, violent
woman-haters and subject them to the same treatment they hand out. But
it would be wrong, counter-productive, and there are so many of them.
Twenty years ago, political philosopher Amartya Sen raised the
relatively undiscussed question of the missing women. In any
population, he pointed out, you might expect slightly more women than
men because of life expectancy. But in some parts of the world this
wasn't the case. In China, there were 107 men to every 100 women. In
India it was 108, and in Pakistan 111.
For whatever reason, this meant something like 100 million women were
simply missing. So where had they gone?
Probably they were killed at birth, died avoidably in childbirth or
were denied the same rights as males to medical care.
In a recent book on women in the developing world, Half the Sky,
American writers Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn write about how
girls in India between the ages of one and five were 50 per cent more
likely to die than their brothers. "More girls have been killed in the
past 50 years precisely because they were girls than people were
slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century," they say.
Kristof estimates there are annually about 6000 "honour killings" (ie
murders of women wanting minimal rights) worldwide. And as many as
three million girls and women have been coerced - as opposed to
recruited - into the Third World sex trade.
Weirdly, when Sen or Kristof and WuDunn or Time magazine point this
out, the reaction of some in the West is to accuse them of a
colonialist mentality.
One female Cambridge academic said last week - from the very belly of
women's free speech and free agency - that the "affluent West" had
"little to offer Afghans other than bikini waxes and Oprah-imitators".
And a British critic of Half the Sky demanded: "Why are we so
wonderful? Our society is still just as sexist, albeit in more subtle
ways, than the burka-enforcing Taliban. Working on a farm and
producing your own food is a far more viable and healthy option than
slaving in a sweat or sex shop."
The dead woman of Badghis is in no position to argue that perhaps the
West might have offered equality before the law, a fair trial, an
absence of overwhelming judicial male violence, and life. She may have
gone to her death with that "stoic docility" noted by Kristof and
WuDunn. She is unlikely to have had any education, and may have
regarded her death as in some way inevitable and necessary. No one
seems to have asked for her views, or to have been interested in them.
And why should we be? We have our own battles to fight. We ought
perhaps to lament the way the world is, the way its different cultures
are, and then move on. It isn't as if we don't have plenty of stuff
left over from our own misogynist past. Take that residual squeak of
what the Iranians call the "golden penis" - the entitlement of the boy
to a greater share - emitted every time girls do better at school. Up
goes the whine that there is "feminisation" of education that
disadvantages boys, who can only succeed when coursework is not
assessed. What utter rubbish!
Here's why it matters so much. Even if we felt no moral imperative to
help (and many do), we have every practical motive. We simply aren't
cut off from the fate of the world's women. A small example surfaced
last week after the shooting of the British couple in Pakistan.
We reported the cases of a number of young British women on the run
from forced marriages and male "honour" violence in this country. As
the Muslim Labour MP Khalid Mahmood explained, when young Asian women
have the chance and the education, they certainly want to exercise
their own choice.
But far more than that, the oppression of women holds back social and
economic development in societies that practise legal misogyny, making
them poorer and more violent.
Birth rates are higher and poverty worse in the world's anti-women
cultures, where girls are usually uneducated.
And where there are more young men than young women, as a result of
polygamy and early death, I bet there is also more violence, more
psychosexual dysfunction, more substitution of the bomb for the
girlfriend. And we all get it in the neck.
The Times
* From: The Australian
* August 16, 2010
IMAGINE for a moment that terrorist violence was, as some insist,
linked to real grievances.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-menace-of-men-who-hate-women/story-e6frg6ux-1225905590147
Think what the women of the world might do to some of the men.
Let's say the Iranian authorities, who insist they will not be "swayed
by the hue and cry in the West", do hang or stone Sakineh Mohammadi
Ashtiani for alleged adultery and murder. Would any Iranian diplomat
be safe from the avenging female army?
Or the husband of Aisha, and the Taliban judge who ordered him to cut
off his young wife's nose and ears after she dared to run away from
her spouse's violence. What might the women's mujaheddin do to them?
Set fire to their beards and cut off slowly the attributes they
imagined conferred on them the right to mutilate another human being?
And the executioners of the nameless woman of Badghis. Or say Mullah
Daoud, the Taliban big cheese who was one of three judges who declared
that a widow who had become pregnant must be an adultress, and should
be flogged in public until nearly dead and then shot in the head. "We
gave this decision so that in future no one should have these illegal
affairs," the mullah said, although no man has been punished.
The "Revolutionary Women's Command", unable to locate the mullah,
would simply target any male in any country with a Pashtun name. "You
must learn to suffer as we have suffered," a video made by a woman in
a burka would say.
The cases are real, the fantasies of revenge are not. In some ways I
wish they were. If only you could take these bearded, yelling, violent
woman-haters and subject them to the same treatment they hand out. But
it would be wrong, counter-productive, and there are so many of them.
Twenty years ago, political philosopher Amartya Sen raised the
relatively undiscussed question of the missing women. In any
population, he pointed out, you might expect slightly more women than
men because of life expectancy. But in some parts of the world this
wasn't the case. In China, there were 107 men to every 100 women. In
India it was 108, and in Pakistan 111.
For whatever reason, this meant something like 100 million women were
simply missing. So where had they gone?
Probably they were killed at birth, died avoidably in childbirth or
were denied the same rights as males to medical care.
In a recent book on women in the developing world, Half the Sky,
American writers Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn write about how
girls in India between the ages of one and five were 50 per cent more
likely to die than their brothers. "More girls have been killed in the
past 50 years precisely because they were girls than people were
slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century," they say.
Kristof estimates there are annually about 6000 "honour killings" (ie
murders of women wanting minimal rights) worldwide. And as many as
three million girls and women have been coerced - as opposed to
recruited - into the Third World sex trade.
Weirdly, when Sen or Kristof and WuDunn or Time magazine point this
out, the reaction of some in the West is to accuse them of a
colonialist mentality.
One female Cambridge academic said last week - from the very belly of
women's free speech and free agency - that the "affluent West" had
"little to offer Afghans other than bikini waxes and Oprah-imitators".
And a British critic of Half the Sky demanded: "Why are we so
wonderful? Our society is still just as sexist, albeit in more subtle
ways, than the burka-enforcing Taliban. Working on a farm and
producing your own food is a far more viable and healthy option than
slaving in a sweat or sex shop."
The dead woman of Badghis is in no position to argue that perhaps the
West might have offered equality before the law, a fair trial, an
absence of overwhelming judicial male violence, and life. She may have
gone to her death with that "stoic docility" noted by Kristof and
WuDunn. She is unlikely to have had any education, and may have
regarded her death as in some way inevitable and necessary. No one
seems to have asked for her views, or to have been interested in them.
And why should we be? We have our own battles to fight. We ought
perhaps to lament the way the world is, the way its different cultures
are, and then move on. It isn't as if we don't have plenty of stuff
left over from our own misogynist past. Take that residual squeak of
what the Iranians call the "golden penis" - the entitlement of the boy
to a greater share - emitted every time girls do better at school. Up
goes the whine that there is "feminisation" of education that
disadvantages boys, who can only succeed when coursework is not
assessed. What utter rubbish!
Here's why it matters so much. Even if we felt no moral imperative to
help (and many do), we have every practical motive. We simply aren't
cut off from the fate of the world's women. A small example surfaced
last week after the shooting of the British couple in Pakistan.
We reported the cases of a number of young British women on the run
from forced marriages and male "honour" violence in this country. As
the Muslim Labour MP Khalid Mahmood explained, when young Asian women
have the chance and the education, they certainly want to exercise
their own choice.
But far more than that, the oppression of women holds back social and
economic development in societies that practise legal misogyny, making
them poorer and more violent.
Birth rates are higher and poverty worse in the world's anti-women
cultures, where girls are usually uneducated.
And where there are more young men than young women, as a result of
polygamy and early death, I bet there is also more violence, more
psychosexual dysfunction, more substitution of the bomb for the
girlfriend. And we all get it in the neck.
The Times
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